The Most Perfect Sleep
by KADH
Summary: Sometimes endings are really just beginnings in disguise. Part of the Time series. Follows “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue” and takes places post season eight, circa February 2009.


**The Most Perfect Sleep**

Sometimes endings are really just beginnings in disguise.

_Part of the Time series. Follows "Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue"_

_and takes places post season eight, circa February 2009._

ooooooo

_For Frank - who has the guts to tell me something sucks every now and then. Despite the fact you drive me crazy, I'm glad you're home..._

ooooooo

CASSIE JAMES: You never know what you need until you find it. And the next thing I find, it might be the thing that changes everything.

GRISSOM: What will you do when you find it?

CASSIE JAMES: Sleep ... the most perfect sleep.

Episode 223: Hunger Artist

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**Sara**

You flick on the lights as we step inside, but before I can get a good look at our new surroundings, I am distracted by you slipping your suit jacket from my shoulders. It quickly joins my wrap over the back of a chair.

We both smile as I ease the knot of your tie. While you make no complaints -- you never do -- I know you are happy to be finally free of it and the constraints of the top two buttons of your dress shirt.

From the corner of my eye, I catch the flash of the ring you slipped on my fingers only hours earlier as you take my hand and press a kiss into my palm. But my grin turns to something else entirely when your lips and breath trail warmth across the inside of my wrist.

**Grissom**

That catch in your throat, then the long exhale of breath -- I know of few sounds as satisfying or stirring as that particular low rumble of a sigh that almost purrs at the back of your throat.

With a whirl, I turn you so your back is to me and I can't help but chuckle _you and your buttons_.

**Sara**

There is more tease than complaint in your voice when you protest yet again about those buttons.

Your fingers are nimble though, sure and steady despite the fact that I know you cannot see them since you are also currently occupied with nuzzling my neck.

**Grissom**

_Gil_, you whisper in that way that seems to make the whole world stop. And when you turn to face me, your eyes are both bright and dark all at once.

We both end up laughing though, as pulling your dress over your head proves to be slightly more complicated than either of us seems to expect. You fumble just as clumsily with the strap to your shoes.

_Allow me_, I say and taking your hand, lead you to the sofa.

**Sara**

It seems like a strange reversal of the old fairy tale, with you kneeling in front of me slipping off my shoes. But then there are some times in life where reality far out trumps the childhood fantasies we are taught to believe in.

**Grissom**

I don't quite let go of your left foot just yet, pausing for a moment to let my thumb linger over that tattoo on your ankle.

Your answer is still the same when I whisper, _You never have told me the story, not in all the years we've known each other. _

Withthat almost impish smirk you sometimes get, you say, _Perhaps_ _someday_.

_But not today_, I sigh.

_You aren't the only one who can be mysterious,_ you tease.

So in reply, I slide my hand beneath your foot and a finger down the center of your sole, which never fails in making you giggle.

Swiftly, you pull your legs up beneath you so that your feet are safely covered by your slip, but I know you are more amused than anything, since you extend a hand to me and tug me onto the couch.

**Sara**

I snuggle into your side. Your touch is light, barely a brush even, as your hand passes from the hollow of my neck, along my shoulder and then down my arm, the metallic coolness of your wedding band a strange sensation on my skin.

You place a kiss into my hair before resting your head on mine.

**Grissom**

Before us, the lights twinkle and glow on the other side of the great expanse of glass, presenting the picture of a city of stillness. While I know that outer peace is only an illusion, the quiet comfort I feel here with you beside me, is not. I know that it is possible for us to find stillness yet, and peace in the quiet comfort of each other. I know because I feel it now.

And once again, I have no words -- not my own nor any one else's -- to mark this moment. This time though, that realization does not pain me. For while sometimes, these times are occasioned by regret and loss, they can also come with love and hope as well.

So we sit there you and I, lost in one of most companionable silences I have ever known.

**Sara**

As the sun begins to creep along the horizon, your breathing begins to deepen and I can tell that you are beginning to fade, that the rush and busyness of the day before has finally caught up with you.

When I lean in to kiss you, your lips part beneath mine and you let out a sigh as I draw away.

**Grissom**

_Come to bed_, you whisper.

But I am not yet ready to surrender to sleep.

**Sara**

You answer with that half grin that tugs at the corner of your mouth and makes your eyes crinkle at the edges and twinkle in a way I know only too well.

And while you take my outstretched hands, you pull me towards you instead to bury your face in the folds of my slip. I run my fingers through your hair as you hold me tight for a long while, before you rise and return my kiss in earnest.

**Grissom**

Though I don't recall ever telling you so, I have always loved your curls. They cascade over my hands when I pull the pins from your hair.

**Sara**

You are gentle, almost shy, and yet still ardent, as you undress me, and I you.

With a tenderness that almost border on reverence, eyes and hands and lips caress as if we have not been together like this for days or weeks or months.

**Grissom**

All I know is that I can no longer think, only feel with the two of us intertwined as the world goes on blissfully oblivious to us and we to it.

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**Grissom**

Eyes bright and face flushed by more than just the early morning light_,_ you are indeed _a vision of loveliness_, paused before the window, hand on the curtains about to pull them closed.

You smile at this, that grin of yours only growing when I proceed to lament on how I no longer have a shirt to wear.

_Looks like we both win then_, you cheekily reply. But that smug look momentarily fades when I shake my head as I close the distance between us, saying as I do so that there was _something just not quite right_ before undoing several of the top buttons and only then pronouncing the whole effect _much better_.

To which you lean in and kiss me with an enthusiasm reminiscent of that afternoon when you first appeared in my kitchen dressed pretty much in the same way.

I couldn't help but laugh that day at how you in your still sleepy state had managed to misalign most of the buttons.

And while my attempt to do them up again properly had begun fairly innocently, I remember finding that I could not resist pausing in the act to brush the fabric aside, slip my fingers around your waist and run my thumbs along the bare skin beneath.

You leaned in then and drew my face down to yours and kissed me as long and longingly as you do now.

Even here and now, I still delight as I first did that day, in knowing that sort of simple intimacy was not merely just permissible but possible.

ooooooo

**Grissom**

Some time in the still yet quiet stillness of morning, I wake to find you sleeping, snuggled into my side and softly snoring in that way that seems at least for now, more endearing than anything.

There is strangely enough, something infinitely reassuring in that deep even measure of breath, in the way its warmth ebbs and flows against my skin, bringing with it a sense of peace.

Truth be told, last night, when you first stepped out of the car in your wedding dress, I wasn't thinking about breathing at all. Nor was I probably.

Yet, you are no less beautiful now, lying here all tousled-haired and dressed only in my shirt.

Ever so slightly you stir as I cover your hand with mine, but only long enough it seems for you to cuddle a little closer and thread your fingers through mine.

I am struck with the thought that after all the years of living with the dead, with pain and loss and grief, I finally find myself finally living -- breathing -- being beyond happiness and contentment.

I suppose it really is true, that if we are very fortunate, that one day, we will wake to an inexplicable sense of joy.

At this, I breathe in deep that lingering scent of you and close my eyes, resting in knowing that before we know it, you and I will both be old and grey (you then, too, and not just I) and that then when I look back then on all the years we've shared together, there will, in having loved you for all those days of my life, be more joy than sorrow.

ooooooo

**Sara**

Since I have been sleeping so much better with you here, I have had little opportunity as of late, to watch you sleep.

But now, in the faint light that peeks from beneath the curtain edges, I can see that the dark shadows have finally left your face, that the lines there have lessened and seem to be more from smiles now than pain, that the tense tightness has left your limbs.

You are relaxed and sleep like I have not seen you do for a very long time.

Almost like you did before Warrick was killed, before Natalie had turned our lives upside down.

Yes, you sleep.

It is not long before I rejoin you.


End file.
